IKE OF THE FOOLSGUARD
By Chris Galletta
Once upon a time I went questing into a dragon cave, which was not the kind of quest that best suited me. I’ll be generous to myself and say I was terrified.
I was the runt of my siblings. The oldest, Barthem, was strong and hirsute and had no problem riding up to a row of cooing maidens with a handful of dogtooth or gillyflower. Our sister Grail, the middle child, had bucked the gender norms of the day and taken to the battle axe like a Flem to liver paste. They generally loved adventure and war and pillaging (the good kind) and testing the limits of their dumb luck. And so, a few days ago, to the shock of some and the surprise of none, they’d been captured by a dragon—the very dragon whose cave I was riding toward. (Did I say riding? I was on foot. The horses did not love me and seemed to bite the apples I fed them with a hint of bemusement.)
The cave was ghastly, its mouth lined with jagged black dolomite, sickly green and yellow geodes pocked into the walls like spider eyes. I don’t know why I volunteered for this—oh wait, I do! Because Father said I had to volunteer, or else “even more shame” would befall our house.
I was training to be a jester, and that was not anyone’s idea of how the son of a king should be spending his early manhood. Never mind that I actually liked it—thinking up jokes, crafting them by candlelight. And jesterdom wasn’t entirely risk-free, was it? A moody lord and an ill-considered bit of political satire could be quite the combustible mix. Also, sometimes a tongue simply had to be cut out, and the jester’s was usually all aflap.
Was it worth pointing out Father’s double standard in celebrating Grail’s “hard” hobbies but scorning my “soft” ones? Probably not; the last adviser who had lectured him about the patriarchy ended up smeared in goose blood and thrown to the bears.
• • •
I was barely a step inside the cave when a coterie of snake guardians slithered up, hissing their customary threats and temptations. I beheaded one of them with my dull sword, and it was an ordeal for both of us—more so for him, but I am just not a big “blood” guy.
The irony here was that I actually did want to be a hero. Sure, my siblings used to throw goblets of piss in my face—this would be where I’d say “but that was years ago” were it applicable—but they were also the only ones who supported my joining the Foolsguard, if tacitly and quietly. All three of us were on eggshells around Father, who had been even surlier lately since “allowing” mother to leave him for Lord Gallantjoust, who is said to have named himself.
As I skulked deeper into the cave, the path split in three. After my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could just make out a dim orange light at the end of the leftmost tunnel, and thusly followed it. If luck was with me (spoiler: it never was), this would be one of those erudite dragons who spoke in rhyme and sat on its hind legs; the other kind just straight murdered you within seconds. Under the circumstances, I could deal with a little affectation.
Nearer the light, the walls glistened with a mysterious film, maybe dragon spit or some kind of glandular secretion—it all felt very lair-y. I turned the corner, and sure enough a deep green, tower-sized dragon had a cauldron on the boil. He was slicing some comically large peppers and onions, presumably from a dragon garden out back, or maybe from the underworld. Barthem and Grail were alive, but bound and hanging from the ceiling. The dragon was referring to a large cookbook, so this was definitely the twee, Anglo-literati type I mentioned.
Barthem saw me and I moved a finger to my lips. He shouted, “Ike! Thank the stars!”
The beast turned, snarling: “Who be you? Where be thy king? Hath he no love for bartering?”
This was going to be exhausting.
“I’m Ike,” I said. “I don’t want to fight you, and I’m sure my siblings didn’t either. There’s just been some confusion. Perhaps we can talk this over like men of letters?”
“Bahh! I am no man!”
“No, no, I know,” I replied. “‘Men of letters’ is just a common phrase, an idiom. I know that’s not your species—I spoke carelessly, and I’m sorry.”
My siblings rolled their eyes; they thought I policed my speech too much as it was, especially if I wanted to “get into comedy.” I had some thoughts of my own on their speech, believe me.
The dragon said, “I’m Hectopol, the liege of death! I smite you with my hellish breath!”
He inhaled, and a fireball started forming in his throat behind the lizardy membrane—which reminded me of a joke I’d jotted down in my tattered jester’s diary, stored in my official Jester’s Satchel that every apprentice had to buy (so far mine contained a deck of trick cards and a cadaver’s hand that I’d learned to have some on-and-off-the-record fun with): “Say, Hectopol—how do dragons weigh themselves?”
The dragon glared, ready to pop.
“With their scales!”
Hectopol arched a brow—then chuckled a bit, despite himself. As he did, the growing flame in his throat disappeared, a wisp of smoke escaping through his flared nostrils. Interesting.
The dragon puffed his chest again, this time slightly pissier. I tried another joke (these were first passes, let me stress): “Do you know which knight designed father’s round table?”
The beast narrowed his eyes, weighing his desire for the punchline against his desire to kill me.
“Sir Cumference,” I said.
Hectopol simmered—it was an execrable joke, I knew that—but then, to my exquisite relief, chortled. His throat-flame fizzled again; my sister Grail whom I love and was here to save shouted, “Ike! Stop telling your shitty jokes!”
As Hectopol readied his terrible mouthfyre for a third, and surely final, time, I searched my mind for a winner. “Two dragons walk into a tavern,” I said. “One of them says, ‘Is it hot in here, or is it me?’”
Hectopol shut his eyes and shook his head. He wanted no part of it.
“…Then the other dragon says, ‘Why don’t you take off your jacket?’”
Hectopol’s lip quivered, he snarled and spit on the floor—and then barked out a genuine, hearty laugh.
I hopped upon the high rocks and cut Barthem and Grail down from their stalactites. We felt a rumble, and turned to see three, no, make that four dragons wandering into the cave, with the uncertain smiles of those suspecting they’d missed a good time.
“What’s so funny, Hectopol?” said a red dragon with eyes as black as the soul of murder.
“Oh, the small spindly one told me a pretty good joke. Very dry with a good left turn at the end, sort of a frustration of the expectation of a punchline.” The dragons nodded along, really dialed into the analysis. I didn’t like intellectualizing humor that much, but there are a lot of schools of thought on that.
Reading the room with his usual expertise, Barthem snatched up his lance and shield. “For the kingdom of Moatland!” He charged Hectopol, who absently flicked him against a rock. Grail ran to claim her axe and said, “In the name of my Father, king of—” and a sort of midsized yellowish dragon looked down at her and said “Can you both stop it for a second?”
I pressed my hands together into a little cathedral and said, “I think I read somewhere that five dragons make a minyan. Can we…?”
“Yes, yes,” Hectopol said. “Be thee gone and all that. Come back with a few more jokes sometime!” Then he turned to his brethren and said, “Okay, so two dragons walk into a tavern. It’s hot, so they say to the tavernkeep…. shit. I’m messing it up.”
A purplish dragon with craggy, obsidian teeth dripping blood said, “Take your time.”
• • •
On the path home, Barthem kicked at some leaves. “You didn’t bring our horses. This is a two-day walk. Thank you for coming, obviously.” I nodded, though my mind had long since turned back to the Foolsguard. Would it be possible—or even worth trying—to explain to Father that my silly japes had done knightly work today?
Grail said, “We don’t have our bows, either. Maybe we can scare the rabbits to death.” Barthem replied, “Ike’s about to ask why we can’t just eat berries.”
Maybe I was. Alas it all. ◊
A former contributor to Letterman, CHRIS GALLETTA wrote The Kings of Summer and is working on a stop-motion animated comedy. This is the most dialogue a dragon has had in any of his work to date.
This article appears in The American Bystander #16. Buy it here.
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